I have no doubt that I stand
here at the very center of creation. Every fir tree, each of its
needles, the movement of wind, all that I perceive and even more
that I don’t, all resonate with a vital hum. It is the hum of the
universe, what the Chinese call the ten thousand things, all of
them speaking out, saying precisely nothing. Each is its own
center, the exact place where the world begins. “The center is
where you are standing,” says Joseph Campbell, “and the other
center is where I am standing.”
Today, this center is a
place called Lolo Peak, a lofty summit in the Selway-Bitterroot
Wilderness just south of Missoula, Mont. To get here, I’ve driven a
half an hour on pavement, bumped nine miles up a dirt road, then
climbed four hours on foot through the succession of forest.
Already I’m in the middle of nowhere — the beginning of
everywhere.
From the topographical map, I see that I
stand 9,100 feet above sea level. The air is clear, like taking the
light of diamonds into my lungs, and if I stand still long enough I
feel the borders of my body dissolve, my skin break away. “So this
is how you swim inward,” writes Mary Oliver. “So this is how you
flow outwards. So this is how you pray.”
Prayer. It can
be a touchy subject. Do I pray when I sit on this rock and admire
the lichen that grows? Or recline in the moss watching the sweep of
the stars? I believe that to come to a wild place on foot is to
approach your life and the life of the land in a meaningful way.
Riding a gondola up, skiing or mountain biking down, the importance
of being where you are is lost, and neither the land nor the self
is visited. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, a Buddhist monk, says, “When
mountain climbing is made easy, the spiritual effect the mountain
exercises vanishes into the air.”
For me, this is the
crux of the matter, because a local rancher, Tom Maclay, has
proposed turning Lob Peak into a year-round resort, including ski
lifts, a golf course and condos. He’s carved ski runs into the
hillside above his home on his land and has petitioned the forest
service to extend his operation all the way to the summit of Lob
Peak. He envisions a little Vail or Sun Valley, I imagine, or Alta.
Although current land-use plans forbid development, he’s looking
for loopholes and ways around it — which he just might find.
What is at stake, I believe, is not one more mountain,
one less mountain lion, or 10,000 more jobs. It is a sense of
wholeness, of integrity and the idea of proportion. What’s only now
becoming understood, and still very hazily, is the idea that the
interior and exterior landscapes depend on each other. What is
unhealthy in one is reflected in the other.
Emerson
called us “part and parcel of nature,” but we behave as though
nature is something “out there.” That we as a species have severed
ourselves from nature to such a degree points to a very real tear
in our spirit, and what consequences it holds for the psyche have
yet to be seen. Aboriginal cultures, apparently, know this
psychological pain. You cannot have a sense of self, they tell us,
an identity of who you are and where you have come from, without a
home.
In the short time that I’ve been on Lolo Peak, I’ve
witnessed the full range of light. The alpine light at dusk,
especially what is called alpenglow, now coats the land in a
blanket of serenity. It is this feeling of peace I wish to bring
home. I know from experience it will last only so long, and I will
have to retreat again and again, retracing my steps into this
community of trees.
As I leave, the last of the day is
bleeding into the sky. The mountains look as if they’ve been
kindled from inside. “The way up and the way down are one and the
same,” said Heraclitus in the fifth century before Christ.
With this thought, I lift myself from the rocks where I
sit. I watch as long rays of sunlight pierce the bottoms of clouds.
In the transparent light, I take a lungfull of air and start my way
down, stepping from rock to rock, center to center, all the way
home.
Charles Finn is a contributor to Writers
on the Range, a service of High Country News
(hcn.org). He is a writer and woodworker in Stevensville,
Montana.
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